A book born of a blog cuts to the chase of how women really cope with the whole business of motherhood

THE YUMMY mummy has a lot to answer for. Slipping her incredibly shrinking belly back into designer jeans and parading her immaculately dressed “mini me”, she defies the notion that early motherhood puts a stop to sex and shopping.

Other first-time mothers, who struggle to find the time and energy to have a shower, never mind a pedicure, wonder where they are going wrong. Is theirs the only baby whose impromptu vomiting, crying or pooing thwarts attempts to get anywhere on time and then, more often than not, brings an outing to a premature end?

You might think the recession had made the “yummy mummy” a bit of an anachronism. After all, mothers are more likely to be concerned with stretching the household budget to nappies rather than splashing out on a designer changing bag.

But no, the concept is alive and well – in the media at least. Just this month the RTÉ website headlined a news item: “‘I’m no sex symbol’ says yummy mummy Miriam”, while another national newspaper was advising its female readers on “how to be a yummy mummy on the run”.

You have to go back to September 2010 to find the last mention of "yummy mummy" in this newspaper. The piece referred to how Penelope Cruz was one in the making at the time. She certainly proved her credentials: her "fabulous post-baby body" was acclaimed by fashion commentators as she "showed off her va-va-voom curves in a dazzling red L'Wren Scott dress" (in the words of Hellomagazine) at the Oscars in February, just one month after giving birth to her son Leo.

For most of us, there is nothing remotely glamorous about pregnancy, birth and early motherhood. We just get on with it – with varying degrees of pleasure and pain – secretly fretting that we may not be doing it “right”.

There is no shortage of pregnancy and baby books telling you how you “should do it”, says mother-of-two Maria Moulton (31). But she believes what Irish mothers need to hear is how other women “have done it”.

In producing her first book, Mammy Diaries, she draws on the recent experiences of more than 200 mothers on that one-way journey from the sight of a DIY pregnancy test turning positive to returning to work – or not – a year and a half later.

“This book is about women being honest,” says Moulton. She started writing a blog in 2008 when her eldest daughter was a few months old, because “there is so much going on when you are at home with babies, it seemed like a good way to get it out”.

There is too much emphasis, she believes, on “this versus that” – bottle versus breast, Caesarean section versus vaginal birth, attachment parenting versus Gina Ford.

Moulton wonders how she would have got through the “massive adjustment” of motherhood without meeting other mothers. She fell in love with an Irish man while here on a year’s working holiday visa in her mid-20s, and gave birth to Lily, now aged three, and then Anna (2) a long way from her native Newfoundland in Canada.

“You don’t realise you are away from your family really until you have children. Then suddenly you go, ‘Oh my God, where’s my mum? My mum’s not here. I am going to talk to other mums’,” she says.

There are lots of other women in Ireland in this situation, she points out. Not just non- nationals, but women who have had to move to another part of the country for work – “a lot of people who just don’t have the family connections at the moment”.

Even those who do have access to family benefit from the company of their contemporaries, particularly if they want to do things differently to the previous generation. There is limited support, she suggests, when you are doing things that are not considered the norm, such as having a home birth, co-sleeping or breastfeeding into toddlerhood.

“With the internet, there is a whole new school of parenting,” says Moulton. The latest research can be accessed in seconds and it makes it easier to find like-minded people.

However, discussion forums are a double-edged sword: conflicting advice can be confusing and undermining. Every baby is different and every mother is different, so it is folly to seek or promote a “magic solution” to issues.

The best advice, she suggests, is to listen to other people, be suspicious of the dogmatic ones, and go with your instincts. Some of the entries in the Mammy Diaries,which is self-published, read like those on a parenting website discussion forum, right down to the liberal use of exclamation marks, capital letters and even the odd emoticon.

The realisation that there are no magic solutions hit home with Moulton after the birth of her second daughter. “We thought we had it licked with Lily,” she says. “She never did anything out of sorts. Then Anna came along and she is a whole different ball of wax.”

She and her husband, Jimmy Casey, were forcefully reminded that these are little people – personalities – not just little automatons responding to certain techniques.

“For the first two years she didn’t sleep more than 20 minutes at a time. You’re thinking, we did the same things we did before: why aren’t they working?”

There was one method, however, that she decided she could not in conscience present in the book as a valid option: “controlled crying”. “There are too many studies that have shown it is detrimental to babies. I would not feel right putting anything in [on it].”

When Moulton was pregnant with Lily, she conversed on Rollercoaster.ie with mothers expecting at the same time. They started meeting up in real life when their babies were four months old.

You think everybody else is coping way better than you, she says. “It took a while for everyone to let go and start being honest.” That is what she wanted to capture in print.

She invited “real mams” to contribute to the book through parenting websites and by putting up notices in cafes, shops, restaurants, “anywhere I could think [of] that new mums might be”.

She started with a general questionnaire on pregnancy, birth and the early days of motherhood, and then moved on to specific questions as the topics broadened. “Cravings” was one subject that never went anywhere, whereas long-term breastfeeding, including tandem feeding (baby and toddler), became an unanticipated hot topic.

“The general consensus was (and I had experienced this for myself) that there is no information or support for women who are breastfeeding older babies and young children in Ireland,” she says. “There are a lot more women doing it than we think – although many don’t discuss it. It’s not seen as acceptable, an attitude that desperately needs changing.”

The cross-section of comments on different aspects of the whole business of babies is broad enough that most prospective and new mothers will find somebody they can identify with.

There is a candour you are unlikely to encounter face to face over a cup of coffee about, for instance, perineal massage, sex during pregnancy and wobbly, leaky bodies post-birth.

Discussion of the most challenging aspects of breastfeeding revolves, as you might expect, around lack of support, sore nipples and other people’s attitudes.

But for Candace (24) from Waterford the biggest difficulty was “feeling touched out. It’s hard when your partner is waiting his turn for your boobs and when the time comes you want them for yourself!”.

On their first pregnancy, women tend to have an insatiable appetite for information, and Moulton was no exception.

“When I was pregnant I read every pregnancy book going. They all end right when everything else is beginning. Pregnancy is a doddle compared to [starting] motherhood, but then you don’t have time to read.”

Up to the time she went to hospital, she was extremely confident about having the baby. “Once I was there, I was made to feel so inept – that I was more of a bother than anything else.”

There are things on which she wishes she had been more informed, such as the decision to be induced two weeks before her due date. “I was not told I had a choice and there was no discussion of pros and cons,” she says.

In contrast, Anna’s birth was “perfect” – in the room off the kitchen at home in Glanmire, Co Cork. “It was the best decision I could have made,” says Moulton on her mobile phone from Abbeyfeale in Co Kerry, where she and her husband are spending a few days with his family. They have taken to the car to ensure their daughters have their mid-day nap.

She gave up work at the English Market in Cork when she was six months pregnant with Lily and he was made redundant from environmental research in UCC a year ago.

Inadvertently, says Moulton, the range of voices in Mammy Diaries illustrates the problems in our over-stretched and, she argues, over-medicalised maternity system. These include the lack of support for breastfeeding and the stigma that persists around postnatal depression.

“I didn’t tell any of my friends as I was, and still am, slightly embarrassed. I suppose I don’t want them [to] know that I ‘failed’ to cope,” writes one anonymous contributor who experienced postnatal depression.

It is a modern phenomenon that you are at home alone with your baby all day long with no support, points out a fellow sufferer.

The media is also to blame, she says, putting pressure on women to get their shape back and be their old self again “when really nothing is like it used to be any more. You have changed, your life has changed, your relationship has changed . . .”

It is that cursed “yummy mummy” again.

HOME TRUTHS: WHAT NEW MOTHERS REALLY THINK...

What “real mams” say about:

The early days

"They were an absolute horror to be honest. Everything was lovely in the hospital. Then we came home . . . The crying never stopped and no one could tell us what was wrong." – Margaret (34), Louth

"I absolutely loved those first few days. I was smitten and couldn't take my eyes off Clodagh." – Ingrid (29), Cavan

Your body after birth

"Flabby, sore, achy, heavy, unsexy, used, ugly, empty, not mine!" – Samantha

"A wibbly wobbly wonder that still passed gas without warning." – Gwen

"Weak, bloated, gross, unfamiliar, traumatised, exhausted, womanly, amazing, natural, fulfilled." – Laura (30), Cork

Day-to-day care

"Don't try and force routine too early. Everything is new to this little person. It'll take a while to get their bearings." – Leanne (26), Donegal

"I totally recommend a routine from as early as possible." – Ingrid (29), Cavan

Bad mammy moments

"On two occasions I accidentally drove to my mum's house 20 minutes away with my son in his car seat and the straps open." – Emma (29), Cork

"I find that plonking him in his chair in front of Bear in the Big Blue House is a great help in the mornings." – Fiona (28), Kildare

"She has home-cooked food in creche but at weekends . . . dinner is from a jar. I have a baby, a relationship and a career. My time is too precious to be tied to a cooker mashing and peeling!" – Jennifer (28), Meath

What they wish they had been told

"It's okay to feel like absolute crap, like a failure and like asking, 'Is there no way I can give this thing back?'." – Joanne (35), Kerry

"That it is hard work, that babies cry a lot, that your relationship with your husband will never be the same again, that you will feel guilty and inadequate all the time and no matter what you read your baby will not conform to the standards." – Amber (36), Cork

"Things do get better – the baby gets into a routine, you get to have a shower on a daily basis and eventually you do get your evenings back, hurrah!" – Anon (33), Dublin

"It's okay to admit to being bored when you're on maternity leave." – Lara (28), Meath

From Mammy Diaries by Maria Moulton, available from originalwriting.ie, €15